


A Fool's Game

by Cyrn



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Modern Era, Mutual Pining, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Reincarnation AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22773433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyrn/pseuds/Cyrn
Summary: Felix struggles to figure out what to do with the knowledge that he and his best friend might have died for each other in a past life, and what he actually wants it to mean in his current one. Reincarnation AU of a post-Black Eagles kind of route.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 321





	A Fool's Game

**Author's Note:**

> The biggest inspiration for this fic was [Kelp's amazing comic](https://twitter.com/nokedoke/status/1212486317403074562) of a modern day Sylvain and Felix chancing upon a painting of their past selves in a museum. Thank you Kelp for your kind words and for allowing me to post this fic with reference to your comic! Please do take a look before reading this fic.
> 
> The title of this fic comes from (a loose, personal translation of) the lyrics of [Ain't Nobody Know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4iw6WvWX4s) by Hoshino Gen, which also influenced this fic greatly.

Felix feels ridiculous, _Googling_ this like an idiot.

_Is reincarnation real. Past lives. How do you know if you have been reincarnated._

He’s nearly at the point of throwing his phone at the wall when Sylvain steps in, literally. He steps in front of Felix, looking at him straight in the eye as he pulls the phone from his hand.

“You need to stop,” he says, too-slow and too-calm, and it makes Felix want to hit _him_ instead. 

The first things he had googled were _Felix Hugo Fraldarius war history_ and _Sylvain Jose Gautier war history_. He feels like he’s going crazy— 

Perhaps, if not for the mug of tea Sylvain has placed in his hands. He looks at the dark-amber swirl of tea (no sugar, no milk, just how he likes it), and tries to breathe. He takes a long, scalding sip, and focuses on the burn of tea down his throat.

“... Better?” Sylvain asks, watching him, his own cup of tea still in his hands.

“... How are you so calm?” Felix asks, in lieu of an answer. 

Sylvain shrugs, shifting around to get comfortable on the floor. He ends up with his cheek perched on the knee held to his chest, staring at Felix for an undetermined amount of time. He smiles crookedly, hand toying with the mug at his foot.

“Well, you’ve always said I was simple minded so… Maybe it’s finally playing up in my favor. Unperturbed by everything!” He laughs, and it resounds in the small room. “What a blessing.”

“... You’re an idiot,” Felix mutters, taking another sip of the tea. “... But not that much of an idiot.” He looks up at Sylvain, frowning. “I’m serious. Aren’t you— Isn’t this—” 

A thought strikes him, and he almost spills the tea in his hands.

“Did you _know_?” Felix asks, voice louder than he might have originally intended. He thinks about the expression on Sylvain’s face, when he had been able to tear his gaze away from the picture, but also the arm that had come around his shoulders, grounding him. Almost as if Sylvain had—

“... No,” and Sylvain’s face does a funny twist which Felix can’t read. “Not really.”

His hands tighten around the mug.

“What do you mean?”

Sylvain shrugs, uninformative as ever.

“I dunno,” Sylvain very helpfully adds, as he looks down at his own mug of tea. “I mean, definitely not the... “ He gestures vaguely in the direction of the window, but Felix understands.

_Not the 12th Century painting which depicted us dying for each other on a battlefield._

Felix makes a noise of assent, and Sylvain nods at his mug.

“Yeah. Not that. But… I dunno Fe,” he looks up at Felix from under his too-long fringe, and Felix’s heart can’t help but lurch (in anticipation _and—_ )

“Haven’t you had the feeling that… We know each other… Too well?”

“We’re childhood friends,” Felix feels himself saying, mouth dry and heart too loud. “Of course we know each other too well.”

Sylvain shakes his head, a smile curling at his lips. “Cruel as always,” he murmurs, straightening up to take a sip of his tea. He hugs both knees to his chest after, and it strikes Felix as a surprisingly child-like action. It reminds him of time spent in their shared tree house, Glenn (self-proclaimedly) “too old” to play up there. Dimitri had been scared of heights, and they had yet to meet Ingrid yet. For a second, he smells the rain-damp scent of the treehouse around them, soft mustiness of the capes they had with them to play pretend.

 _See_ , a voice in his head whispers, _too long._

“You… know what I mean, right?” Sylvain continues, more cautious than before, and it makes Felix curl his arms around himself. “Like… When I knew you didn’t like sweets, even though we just met.”

“Lots of people don’t like sweets,” Felix retorts, knowing that he’s just trying to be difficult.

Sylvain knows too, holding Felix’s gaze. “Not five year-olds usually. I mean… like when I knew you had broken your arm before you told me, when I was… twelve? You didn’t tell me, I hadn’t seen you, you just called me and— And I just _knew_ , immediately.”

“You’ve always had good instincts,” it’s roundabout praise and insistent denial rolled all into one, and perhaps it’s the combination of everything which makes Sylvain laugh, his whole body moving with his amusement.

“C’mon Fe,” he finally says, and Felix feels the serious timbre of Sylvain’s voice in his bones. “You know what I’m talking about.”

He does.

Felix has felt it before too, like a whisper of breath at the back of his neck, when the Gautiers had first brought their youngest son over to play. When they’d shaken hands, a mimicry of the adults around them, he had looked into Sylvain’s eyes and felt— Like he had seen this older boy around before, somehow, even though they had just moved into the neighborhood. 

He remembers his parents’ surprise at how well they had gotten along; “Felix is finally growing out of his crybaby stage,” he remembers hearing, and he’d shuffled away too quickly to hear anything more than the adults’ conjecture.

He remembers feeling the same tingle down his spine at meeting Dimitri, and later, Ingrid. The bone-deep knowing of familiarity, like he’d seen them in a dream before, that they could be trusted, even though they were older and kind of scary. And this was even _before_ Ingrid had knocked over the group of playground bullies for him. 

So he does know. And with Sylvain still staring at him, the quiet of the room buzzing in their ears, he knows that Sylvain knows that too. 

“... What’re you thinking, Fe?”

“... I don’t know,” Felix admits, staring down at his lap. “Isn’t it…” He shrugs one shoulder. “Isn’t this just… Really weird?”

He hears Sylvain chuckle opposite him. “Kinda yeah. But I mean… What can we do right? It’s just… What it is. I mean it might not even… Really be us?” He laughs again, and Felix can hear the barest edge of hysteria. 

He looks up at Sylvain, who just blinks at him, mouth locked in a crooked twist.

“Fuck, that’s weird to say. That it’s— That it _could_ be us. What the hell.” He shakes his head, rotating his cup absently.

“It’s just a painting,” Felix hears himself say, just because he has to, someone has to say it, even if neither of them believe it.

“It’s just a painting,” Sylvain agrees. “It doesn’t have to— Not everything in life means something.” Felix watches the way Sylvain’s tongue darts out to lick at his chapped lips. “Right?”

“Right,” he echoes, a bit too quick. He looks back down at his phone, the screen having darkened after Sylvain had taken it away from him.

_But what if it does?_

He looks up at Sylvain, looking at him — and just _knows_ , again. 

A beat passes, the silence held a second too long, and Sylvain chuckles, pushing the phone back to Felix, who just watches him. Sylvain unfolds himself, careful of the mug of tea as he shuffles himself over to sit next to Felix instead, both their backs pressed against the wooden frame of Sylvain’s college dorm bed. Sylvain picks up the phone himself when Felix has yet to move, unlocking the phone with (unfortunately) practiced ease.

Sylvain pulls up the closed Chrome app, still open to _reincarnation how can it happen_ , and hands it back to Felix wordlessly.

\+ 

Ingrid and Dimitri ambush him at the library of all places. He blinks up at them, caught out by their assessing gazes. Ingrid has an eyebrow raised at the number of history books around him.

“... Yes?” Felix asks, when nothing seems forthcoming.

“Well hello to you too,” Ingrid pulls out a chair in front of him, and Dimitri follows suit.

“You didn’t say hello either,” Felix snorts, as he tidies away some of the piles of books he had already scanned through. “Hello, I guess, if that’s necessary.”

“Hello,” Dimitri responds, polite as ever, even as he’s glancing over at the covers of the book closest to him. 

“Hello,” Ingrid acknowledges in turn, barely suppressing a grin. She nods at him formally, as if they had ever practiced such niceties with each other. “I haven’t seen you actually read though so many books since… I don’t know. Ever, I guess.”

“I read,” Felix frowns, flicking through another tome. “Did you come all the way here, to the library to comment on my _reading_ habits?”

A pause, and Felix looks up at them, barely catching a shared glance.

Dimitri had been there that day, but Ingrid had not. No doubt, their countless mutual friends would have filled her in by now, and it’s always been in Ingrid’s nature to, well, care. _Especially_ about things which did not require it, Felix thinks to himself, as he looks back down at his book. 

“I’m fine, if you’re here to ask just that,” Felix answers, even though a question had never been posed. Ingrid is predictable, in a kind-of-sweet way he has only begun to admit to appreciating. “I assure you that I am still fulfilling my lab hours, and have yet to strain any other muscles in training lately. Other than the ones you last heard about anyway. I _am_ eating at humanly intervals—”

“Felix,” Dimitri interrupts. “What have you found?”

Felix looks up at him, a little surprised. There’s a measure of determination in Dimitri’s eyes and—

“... Did you know?” Felix asks, because he must.

Dimitri shakes his head, as does Ingrid. Felix just nods, rifling through some papers he had scribbled on. He slides them over to his friends, who look over his notes.

Another pause, but this one, Felix understands.

“Felix,” Dimitri starts, sheepish, “I’m sorry but I can’t—” 

Felix clicks his tongue, pulling his notes back to him. Ingrid’s mouth is barely holding it together, and Felix can practically hear the laugh she’s repressing. She had always chided him about his penmanship. Whatever. All his reports are written with a computer anyway.

“I looked into the painting first… “War’s Promise”, painted in the 1200s. I know shit about art history or, well, history I guess, but I wanted to see if it’s… Really based on true events.” 

Dimitri nods, encouraging, and Felix glances at him, before looking back down at his papers. On it, _Dimitri Blaiddyd_ and _Ingrid Galatea_ have been scribbled, right next to his and Sylvain’s names.

“And… It is.” He glances up at them, thinking about summers past, skinned knees and just that same deep knowing.

“You were both… Our names…” He gestures at the books surrounding them. “There were people,” he says slowly, picking out his words the way Sylvain is always telling him to have more care with, “with our names and our faces. Back in the 1100s.”

The truth sits heavily, like the stacks of history books between them.

“That’s… Interesting,” Dimitri murmurs, and it’s all so ridiculous that Felix can’t help but snort, pulling a thinner book from the stack. He flips through the pages he had already looked through, looking for a dog-eared page.

“You were a prince, y’know,” Felix shoves the book at Dimitri, pointing at the portrait which really… Didn’t need to be pointed at. It’s a painted likeliness, but the set of his eyes and the line of his jaw is… Uncanny, to say the least. Dimitri blinks at it, looking up at Felix, then Ingrid. He watches the pull of Dimitri’s shoulders, straightening up, almost as if to match the man’s stance.

He tries to picture a crown of sorts on Dimitri’s head, and fails.

“And… His name is Dimitri?” Dimitri asks, wary and curious.

“Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd,” Felix reads off the book. “That’s not your middle name but… Well.” He pulls the book from Dimitri’s hands, finding a second dog-eared page. 

“Ingrid,” he states, because there’s nothing else to say. As he watches Ingrid stare at herself, as depicted almost a thousand years ago, he thinks about that moment in the museum.

He had never wanted to take art history, but Sylvain had somehow persuaded him to choose the module to fulfill their arts requirement. _Together_ , he had cajoled, fluttering his eyelashes, and Felix had pushed him away, still stupidly weak to Sylvain’s demands. He had never understood the pleasure Sylvain seemed to get from reading chapters upon chapters of art theory and literary critique. But in the quiet of his mind, he might admit that he appreciated the stillness of Sylvain’s form as he took in art, theatre and opera, a world so far removed from himself that all Felix could do was feel the beauty of things second-hand, through Sylvain.

(Sylvain’s own aesthetic form was another matter altogether.)

He remembers the static in his ears as he looked at War’s Promise for the first time. Both figures had their faces obscured, tucked into each other’s shoulders like— like a lovers’ embrace. But Felix had taken one look and had _known_ , his whole form resounding with the knowledge like a tuning fork struck— and reverberating, till this moment.

It had been them.

Even with the blood and gore and clothes they had never worn in their lifetimes, even with the arrows sticking grotesquely out of their backs— shielding each other but falling on the metaphorical sword at the same time anyway— Felix had no doubt.

Ingrid’s cough brings him back to the present, as she pushes the book back at him.

“Felix,” she prompts, “are you just going to… Keep researching?”

Felix shrugs, nodding at the stack to his left. It’s ironic that Ingrid had been the one who had praised his single-minded focus as a child (not so much when it was targeted at annoying her, but still). 

“There’s still more,” he states, shuffling through the books for the sake of something to do.

“While I have agreed with Ingrid that you need more varied hobbies than just your lab work and kendo,” Dimitri says, “I… Don’t think this is what we really had in mind.” Pause. “Unless, this really does… Call to you as a hobby, I suppose.”

“This isn’t a hobby,” Felix snorts. “This isn’t fun, obviously. I just…” He shrugs one shoulder, glancing at the setting sun outside, before frowning back at Ingrid and Dimitri.

“Don’t you want to know?” He presses, the same itch he felt in Sylvain’s room that day.

Dimitri frowns consideringly at the book in front of him, while Ingrid, as always, meets him head on.

“But… Haven’t you already found out?” She gestures at his notes and the tomes on his other side, the pile already read and wrung of all information. “You found, well, people who looked like us. Who somehow had our stories and our names, just not really, I guess.”

“You’ve found that out already,” she continues, “so what are you looking for now?”

_Some reason for all of this; some theory about how this all could be so; something more definite than pages upon pages of parallels but none meeting up other than in the bloodiest end for all of us—_

“Felix,” Dimitri prompts, as gentle as he can manage. “Sylvain wouldn’t say so but… He’s worried about you too.”

 _— For some goddamn reason for why this— this_ thing _with Sylvain almost physically hurts with its intensity._

He feels the words crawl up his throat and surrender there, his shoulder raising in a shrug instead. They sit there with him, quiet and undemanding, and Felix knows they’d sit there with him till the library closes if that’s what he asked them to do. 

And for that, he decides that he has to go.

He stands up abruptly, stacking up the remaining books into piles. He barely catches Ingrid startling at the suddenness of his actions.

“Felix—”

“I need a break,” Felix mutters, dropping the stacks loudly into the return carts near him. “I’m going for kendo.”

“Felix,” Dimitri stands, as Felix shoves his laptop and papers into his backpack. “Is this about you and—” 

“No,” he grits out, before Dimitri can even finish. “It’s not.”

\+ 

Glenn’s words are still caught in the whirl of his mind, spiraling. He composes texts and deletes them over and over.

_What did you mean when you said that I’m Felix Hugo Fraldarius, and that there’s no one else?_

_Have you ever felt like you’ve had past lives?_

_Do you believe in bad omens?_

He deletes them all because they don’t have that kind of relationship. There was a Glenn Fraldarius in the books too, painted in history as a knight who simply died too young, for the glory of his country in tough times. 

His Glenn turns twenty-six this year, older than his the Glenn of the 11th Century had ever managed.

 **Felix:** I’ll come for dinner next thursday

 **Glenn:** ok :D i’ll tell dad, maybe he’ll lay off you lol

They have a fairly normal sibling relationship, he thinks. After his mother passed, it was just the three of them. But Glenn had always been older and busy with the life he had made for himself. Their father was often away, which left Felix to his own devices, usually resulting in him being in the company of Dimitri, Ingrid and Sylvain and their families.

It was fine. There was nothing truly tragic about his life; shit happened, and you dealt with it. There wasn’t always a bigger reason; there were worse hands he could have been dealt.

At night when he closes his eyes, he thinks of the Felix Hugo Fraldarius he read about in the books. A skilled swordsman, a young commander of the army. Dimitri had been his prince, then his king, and he had served as an army general with Ingrid and Sylvain. In his mind, he sometimes sees a real sword in his hand, the metal weight of it unsettlingly heavy, instead of his usual kendo shinai.

Sometimes, he dreams of battlefields littered with bodies and blood. Of an eyepatch over Dimitri’s eye, and Ingrid looking haunted and weary beyond her years. Sometimes Sylvain is there, standing tall in dark armor with lance in hand, and sometimes he’s just a body clutched in Felix’s bloodstained arms.

In his dreams, the depth of how he feels almost makes sense. A lifetime of bonds tightened by grief and pain, forging his emotions like the steel of his sword— worn and battered, yet sharp and _warm_. He wonders if he would still be overwhelmed then, cut by the sharpness of this implausible love. 

Just once, he dreams of a sun-warmed patch of grass in an old castle he’s never seen. Sylvain laid upon it, stretched out in a strange uniform which looked right on him, and there was no blood at all. His smile was the same, and the way he beckoned for Felix to curl up with him was— Not.

(He doesn’t have that dream a second time.) 

+

Sylvain, as if warned by Ingrid and Dimitri’s experience, catches Felix at the stoop of his apartment after kendo practice.

Felix is sweat-sticky and exhausted after hours of wearing himself down, so he just blinks at Sylvain who stares back at him, an eyebrow quirked.

“I brought takeout?” He offers, and that’s a good opening certainly; Felix is only human, and it looks like the Almyran place he likes from down the road. He nods at Sylvain, his mouth curling up in response as he fumbles for his keys.

“Needed an excuse to order more?” He half-jokes, opening the door for the both of them.

“Please, the girl at the restaurant knows me because of how often we’re there,” Sylvain laughs, “she gave me extra.”

“Hmm,” Felix hums noncommittally, too tired to entertain the familiar twist of his stomach whenever Sylvain talks about girls, no matter how casual.

They sit on the floor of Felix’s cramped room, the takeout laid out between them. He thinks it’s Sylvain’s way of being nice maybe, that he entertains Felix with small talk and gossip about their friends while Felix stuffs his face with food. He talks of how Annette finally worked up the courage to do open mic at the cafe down the road, how Dedue’s coaching him in the gym and that his new routine is _killing him_. He doesn’t mention the fact that they haven’t seen each other in a week, when they usually have lunch or dinner together every other day or so.

“So,” and Felix can tell this is the real opener, as Sylvain rests back against Felix’s closet, the cartons of food between them now empty. “Ingrid and Dimitri told me they bumped into you in the library the other day.”

“Only about as much as you just “bumped into me” at the stoop of my apartment, holding my favorite takeout,” Felix snorts, crossing his arms. There’s a flicker of tension between Sylvain’s eyes and Felix… is tired. 

“... You guys worry too much,” is his concession and non-apology. “I’m fine. I mean, you can see so for yourself. You even fed me.” 

“We’re used to watching out for you, you know that. You get… Very intense about things, sometimes. Remember when you first got into kendo?”

Felix frowns, and refuses to concede the point. He had been fourteen and a little more than angsty at… the world, basically. He’s not going to overwork himself to the point of collapse _now_.

“You three always see me as the little kid of the group,” Felix complains. “I’m _not,_ in case no one has noticed.”

“... Trust me,” and Sylvain’s chuckle echoes strangely enough that Felix looks back at him. “We’ve noticed.” He coughs under Felix’s focused stare, waving it away. “We’re not worried about you falling flat anymore really, it’s just…” He shrugs. “It’s just a reflex, y’know?”

Felix frowns, nodding tightly. He gets it, like the thrum of familiarity under his skin, but it doesn’t mean it’s not annoying at times. 

“So, tell me about what you found out.” 

Felix looks at him, holding his gaze. He looks… Curious, probably. Felix had always thought that anyone who truly took Sylvain’s airheaded facade at face value had to be an idiot. Anytime he looked, he could see the sharpness in Sylvain’s eyes, a perceptive alertness he had come to plainly see in him.

Felix licks his lips, the slightest bit nervous. And then he begins.

He tells Sylvain about all the books, of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, the tortured prince who eventually lost his land and Kingdom to the Empire. Of Ingrid Brandl Galatea, a knight of Dimitri’s, who was noted to have fought valiantly despite her father’s wishes, and who eventually came to serve as a general for the Kingdom — with Felix Hugo Fraldarius and Sylvain Jose Gautier. They all grew up together, apparently, even though their lands were spread and their time together fraught with trauma and war. Felix tells Sylvain about the brother that the Sylvain of the history books had, of the massive battle between the two of them. The details of the battle had been lost to time — apart from the fact that Sylvain had slain his brother with his own lance. 

Felix tells Sylvain about the Glenn Fraldarius of the history books, who died in The Battle of Duscur. 

There were mentions in the books of War’s Promise, the very painting they had seen in the museum, being one of the last surviving originals of the 12th Century. There was some commentary about brotherhood in war, with some side commentary about how Felix and Sylvain of the Kingdom had an almost romantic sworn promise: that they would not live without the other. 

He tells Sylvain every inch of what he had found out, until there’s nothing left in him.

Sylvain hands Felix his own tea, now lukewarm, but still appreciated. 

“... I see,” Sylvain says, and it’s so absolutely lacking compared to the torrent of history Felix had just let loose, that they both end up laughing. 

“Well, what do you want me to say,” Sylvain snorts, undignified in his laughter, and Felix loves every inch of him, sprawled out on the floor of his bedroom. 

He absently wonders when he stopped flinching at thinking about it as love.

“I mean, it feels like you really read the whole library,” Sylvain continues to chuckle, oblivious to Felix’s thoughts. “And you always said that the humanities sucked.”

“I said I didn’t like them, not that they sucked,” Felix corrects him. “Dima thought it was my new hobby,” he adds, and they both end up laughing on the floor again.

“Dimitri wouldn’t want to offend you if you really decided that Fódlan history was your next big obsession,” Sylvain grins from opposite him, cheek pressed against the floor. 

“Yeah,” Felix agrees, his voice softer from the breathlessness of the laughter. “I guess it was… Kind of nice.”

“Hmm,” Sylvain nods, rolling onto his back. “What about the reincarnation stuff?”

That, Felix had considerably less on. His search took him to religion more often than not, and while the theories were somewhat interesting, there was a reason why death still remained as daunting and foreboding as ever. There was nothing conclusive, and certainly no anecdotes or reports he would bet any amount of money on. 

“... I dunno. Couldn’t really find anything I thought was reliable enough.”

“Does it bother you?”

“That reincarnation could be real?”

“That we could be reincarnations of those people you read about. Of… That Sylvain Gautier and that Felix Fraldarius.” 

“... I don’t know.”

“Hmm,” Sylvain hums, still looking at the ceiling, and Felix can’t quite allow himself to stare at his profile for any longer. He turns on his back too, lying parallel to each other in the relative quiet.

“You know,” Sylvain adds, “Ingrid asked me why you were so desperately looking for information.”

“... What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t know. But… That my guess was that you just felt like you needed to find out. Something. I don’t know what the something is.” Felix catches the motion of Sylvain twisting his head to look at him from the corner of his eye. 

“So what is it?”

Felix has never been a match for Sylvain’s seriousness; he’s too fond of the way Sylvain looks at him— truly _looks_ at him, like nothing else quite matters in the moment, regardless of his actions at any other point of time in the day. 

“I feel it,” Felix mutters, voice low, barely managing to hold Sylvain’s gaze. “I feel… It’s like what you said. I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

He watches the quirk of Sylvain’s mouth, the minuteness of the movement endearing in its honesty. “We _have_ known each other forever.”

Felix closes his eyes, and he can feel his heart’s too-loud thrum, right against his throat. “More than that. More than… However old we are now. I just,” he coughs a little, voice cracking from talking more than he was used to. “When we met for the first time, I felt like I had known you even before then. And when we were at the museum I just—” his voice cracks again, “— I _knew_ , again. And I looked over at you and saw it in your eyes too and so…”

“I had to know,” Felix whispers, “if there was something— bigger than us, making me feel this way.” 

He hears Sylvain parallel to him, breathing.

“What if you never find out for sure?” Sylvain asks. “Or even if you did— even if you knew for sure that we’re— we’re _them_ , that War’s Promise was us, then what?”

_What are you looking for?_

He hears the unasked question, and turns on his side to look at Sylvain. Sylvain, who is looking right back at him, across a sea of takeout boxes and tea mugs. He looks and looks, and struggles with what feels like fate.

 _For something that will tell me that this would be a risk worth taking_ , he thinks to himself, cowardly despite himself. _That any of this makes sense._

 _Is this it_ , he wonders helplessly, _is all of this just— just how it was always meant to be?_ He looks at the warm, soft brown of Sylvain’s eyes, the tiny scar at his lip from where he’d had a bike crash as a kid, and feels the deep cut of his own emotions, tearing through what feels like lifetimes of distance. 

Sylvain reaches out for him slowly, his hand finding its way across the cartons to rest on his, their fingers barely overlapping.

“Maybe you don’t need that, Fe,” Sylvain breathes, as he intertwines their fingers together. “Even if— Even if it wasn’t our past selves who died for each other in a war a thousand years ago… Is—” Sylvain’s voice cracks this time, and Felix can’t stop staring at how it makes Sylvain’s face flush with colour. 

“— Is this enough?”

“Yeah,” Felix says, voice coarse, but he can see the way it lights up something in Sylvain’s eyes as he pulls himself up to sitting position, stepping over the cartons to straddle Sylvain. 

Felix breathes, “I’m not— This is what you—” 

“Yes, _yes_ Felix, _fuck_ ,” Sylvain laughs as he winds an arm around his shoulders, pulling him down to him. 

Their mouths meet, a harder kiss than Felix had been expecting, and Felix shivers at the feeling of Sylvain’s hand carding through his hair. He presses down against him, greedy and drunk on the warm smell of Sylvain under him, his jaw solid and _real_ under Felix’s fingers. 

“ _God_ you’re gorgeous, Fe,” Felix feels the words as a breath against his mouth, right before Sylvain licks into him. He stops thinking, just from the way Sylvain groans into his mouth, shuddering at Felix’s touch.

Felix eventually pulls back, breathless, and watches the way Sylvain’s chest heaves with lack of breath, his hoodie rucked up and rumpled from Felix’s hands and—

“What’re you thinking about?” Sylvain smiles, still catching his breath, fingers tracing the curve of Felix’s neck.

Felix just looks, feeling a hunger he never knew he had, for the Sylvain who looks so well-kissed and happy. And it’s just him. Just the Sylvain he’s known for years.

“Doesn’t matter,” Felix decides, and leans back in.

“Heh, enjoying the view were you?”

“Shut _up_ , oh my god,” Felix can’t help but laugh, and this feels familiar somehow, the way their mouths meet, smiling and teasing, even though it’s the first time. 

Where their skin presses together is warm and _right_ , and after just moments of this — of _them_ — Felix can imagine what it’d be like to chase this feeling over and over again, across bloodied battlefields and lifetimes apart. 

**Author's Note:**

> _Alternate summary for this story:  
>  Felix: what does this mean  
> Everyone: what do you want this to mean  
> Felix:  
> Felix, softly: fuck._
> 
> Thank you again, to all the usual suspects, Hika, Amanda and Momo, for their assorted encouragement and beta services. These words would never have been written without you three. And definitely to Kelp as well, for your time and beautiful comic! 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, all your comments and kudos never fail to make my day!


End file.
